How Much Of What?

Almost everything I make is subject to interpretation and generally messing around with. Paprika Shrimp? That paprika sauce is great with eggplant and tofu too. But here is what I generally mean by ingredient quantities and cooking.

Onions
I generally figure 1/2 an onion per person per portion. So a meal for two? At least one medium to large onion. I personally don't believe you can have TOO much onion. Since I'm using green onions and the sizes range figure one loosely packed cup for the same.

Cooking Onions
Unless I say caramelized [which is harder to do when using veggie broth, but you can add honey at the end of the saute] you can cook the onions to your preference. Less cooking=more texture. I generally cook 'em down pretty well.

Veggie Broth
An excellent substitute for oil for most sauteing. How much? Coat the bottom of your pan, add more if it seems you need to. Srsly, trust the force Luke, you can do this.

Oil
Again, unless I specify, to your preference and/or what the instance calls for. For instance, pesto going on bread as a dip requires a little more oil, pesto going on pasta, less. I find most pesto recipes call for a scary amount of oil and I don't generally use that much.

Garlic
Go light on raw garlic when adding to recipes. I once added 6 cloves of raw garlic to Ayo Blanco soup. Man, that was garlicky! Cooked garlic really mellows out though and you can safely add 2-4 very large cloves to almost any of my recipes.

In large part--in cooking like in art and like in gardening--I let me intuition guide me. Not very intuitive? Here's a really interesting book with concrete exercises about hearing your intuition better. Everyone has it--just not everyone listens to it.